


I learned the voices died with me

by subducting



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dark!13, Hurt/Comfort, Monster of the Week, Self-Loathing, Teleporter Mishap AU, Violence, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:40:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22366525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subducting/pseuds/subducting
Summary: “Sorry Doc,” the man said heavily, before he and Ryan deposited her in a room. She leapt to her feet as soon as they’d let go, gasping for air, but they had already retreated from the shut door. “No!” she wailed, banging a fist on the door, “No, no no no no-” she punched the the door again, but the third time something cracked and she gasped, sliding down the door, cradling her hand against her chest as her body shook and shuddered with desperate sobs, as she watched her fam retreat from behind the now bloodied, sealed glass door. She was getting lightheaded, her breathing getting shallower and shallower and her head swam, the exertion making her too weak to even stand. “Please,” she croaked out one final plea, head lent against the glass.***The Doctor and the fam teleport aboard a spaceship to find the crew absent. But the Doctor is acting strangely, and in the dark, things that seem clear become murky.Title in reference to the Hozier song:“My peace has always dependedOn the ashes in my wake”
Comments: 86
Kudos: 242





	1. Sinking Sand

“Yaz, please, you have to listen to me,” the Doctor was begging, her breaths coming in laboured gasps, “Nnngh- I- I- I need you to trust me, please!” Yaz backed away expressionlessly, the distraught timelord clasping desperately at her sleeves, hands shaking. She shook her head silently, gazing down into panicked hazel eyes, rimmed with glittering tears. Gently but firmly, Yaz twisted her arms until she held the Doctor’s wrists, and the woman truly began panicking, dropping to her knees suddenly, the unexpected movement yanking her arm’s out of the human’s grasp. “Yaz, please,” the Doctor’s voice was a desperate whisper, coming from her chest, “Please don’t do this, I’m begging you, I’ll do anything you want, I- I can make you immortal, I can give you anything, just don’t do this don’t leave me here please-”

Her words cut off with a terrified shriek as Ryan and Graham arrived, hauling the Timelord to her feet and away from Yaz, her feet kicking and her body contorting so much in panic they barely managed to maintain their grip on her underarms as they dragged her backwards. The whole while she kept up a frenzied protest, begging, bargaining, screaming and crying. “Ryan, Graham,” she gasped, elfin features twisted with panic, tears streaming freely down her face, “Graham please, please, you don’t have to do this just stop a minute-”

“Sorry Doc,” the man said heavily, before he and Ryan deposited her in a room. She leapt to her feet as soon as they’d let go, gasping for air, but they had already retreated from the shut door. “No!” she wailed, banging a fist on the door, “No, no no no no-” she punched the the door again, but the third time something cracked and she gasped, sliding down the door, cradling her hand against her chest as her body shook and shuddered with desperate sobs, as she watched her fam retreat from behind the now bloodied, sealed glass door. She was getting lightheaded, her breathing getting shallower and shallower and her head swam, the exertion making her too weak to even stand. “Please,” she croaked out one final plea, head lent against the glass.

**SIX HOURS EARLIER**

“So there’s been no signal from the station at all since the teleporter malfunction?” Yaz asked, frowning.

It took her a moment to realise how casually she had asked the question, and she felt a little thrill of pleasure. Here she was, the other side of the galaxy and hundreds of years into the future, and she was solving crimes like a pro. Or trying to, anyway. She glanced at the Doctor, who seemed more interested in partially dismantling the teleporter than asking questions, and Yaz’s interviewee’s eyes kept drifting worriedly off of the police officer’s face and to her blonde-haired companion.

“Er, is that-” he winced as she tossed some metallic object backwards over her shoulder, which landed on the other side of the room with a clatter, “-Strictly necessary to your investigation?” he asked uncertainly. Graham stood up from where he was crouched next to the Doctor (who had ignored or just plain not heard the question) and clapped the man on the shoulder and flashed him the trademark reassuring smile. “Don’t you worry, the Doctor here’s the best mechanic in the galaxy,” he said, “If there’s a problem with your teleporter, she’ll find it.”

“Best mechanic in several galaxies, actually,” the blonde corrected modestly, standing up and wiping her hands, before placing them on her hips, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong this end. But I think I can have a go at fixing the signal and trying to open the route back up from here,” she announced, rubbing her hands together.

“Right, well, while you’re doing that,” Ryan said, returning from down the corridor, where he had been trying to look up more information, “Listen to this- there are rumours at the space-dock that one of the crew members was smuggling something dangerous aboard the ship.”

The expression on the face of the company official- Myles, Chief Inspector of Shipping Operations, according to Yaz’s notes- went from nervous to alarmed. “That’s not possible,” he said quickly, “No gal-mat employee would ever-” he was interrupted by the Doctor, who was busily sonicking the teleporter.

“Did you say dangerous, Ryan?” she asked, face lighting up like a kid on Christmas, “I love dangerous! Dangerous on a ship. In space. Amazing!”

Yaz shot the alien a  _ look _ , as Myles started looking affronted. She put on her best “PC “calm” Khan” face and said, “Don’t worry. We’re going to look into it and do everything we can to get this sorted, okay?”

The man still looked like he wanted to say something to the Doctor, but he was spared the necessity of working out exactly what by a sizzling noise. “Oooh, great!” The Doctor exclaimed, turning around with her arms open, “C’mon, fam! One teleporter, perfectly safe. Probably.”

“Probably?” Graham winced, “It’s not gonna vaporise us or anything, is it Doc?”

“Or land us in deep space again?” added Ryan. The Doctor threw her hands up in exasperation. “That was  _ one  _ time!” she said defensively, “And I was very sorry about it!”

“Guys, come  _ on _ ,” Yaz said, with the air of a long suffering teacher trying to coax children onto a bus, arms out to herd the boys towards the teleporter, “Myles is counting on us, remember?”

“Right you are,” Graham said, nothing under his breath that he’d never  _ actually _ gotten a negative on the risk of vaporisation, but by then they were on the teleport pad. He screwed his eyes up as the Doctor’s screwdriver did, and with a flash and a faint smell of ozone, they vanished.

***

Something was wrong. She could feel it as soon as they appeared on the ship. It took her a moment to realise what it was, as she doubled over, gasping.

One heart.

Only one of her hearts was beating!

No… worse….. The Doctor gasped again, clutching the right side of her chest, which was suddenly empty of a heart. She let out a cry of shock, and toppled to her knees.The fam were recovering themselves, it had been a bumpy trip for everyone, apparently, but they had all made it.

“Doc?” Graham asked through gritted teeth, before he seemed to realise she was doubled over, and he asked again, tone urgent, “Doc!”

“My heart,” she gasped, “One of my hearts is….” she shook her head, feeling her chest. There wasn’t a gap, or anything, but the second heart was very much not there. Steadying hands gripped her shoulder and she heard Yaz’s voice somewhere behind her, “What’s happening? Are you sick?”

“I- I don’t know,” she breathed, trying to calm down. A racing pulse was the last thing her single remaining heart needed right now, “I- I don’t understand- has anyone seen a heart lying around?”

Gingerly, the fam looked around. It didn’t  _ look  _ like they’d hit the teleport chamber- they were in a curving white corridor, with windows opening onto a starfield. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on your point of view), it seemed clear of random timelord organs, and of any signs of life at all. In fact, the only light apart from the distant motes of the starfield was something that looked like dim emergency lighting.

The Doctor was breathing out slowly, eyes closed. “Breathing technique of the Atraxian monks,” she explained between breaths, “Need to slow my heart rate down. Don’t want this one working too hard.” She let out a final breath before opening her eyes and making to stand. She got one foot under herself, but the second leg didn’t get past the knee, and she awkwardly slumped into Ryan’s middle instead. “Downside is that ‘m not getting enough oxygen ‘round my body,” she said, working not to panic.

“So we need to find you some oxygen, then,” Yaz determined. “Biology,” the Doctor croaked with a wrinkled smile up at Yaz, as Ryan tried to lever her upright off of his abdomen. She managed to get stood up, and, with Graham on one side and Yaz on the other, they set off in search of a medical bay.

***

Elsewhere on the ship, the teleporter glowed, and a figure emerged into shadow on the ship. It looked around with keen interest, noting everything analytically but giving nothing away. Nearby, catching the figure’s attention, something growled loudly and ominously. There was a scrape of claws from a couple of rooms away, and the noises of something too big for a space being forced to exist within it anyway, limbs and sides thumping lightly into metal and sending echoing thuds through the ship. A low, intrigued whisper responded. 

“ _ I know _ .”


	2. Heartfelt

“That’s better,” the Doctor said, when they had the strip fixed over her nose. It was a similar sort of thing to what they had worn on Orphan 55, feeding the Doctor a higher percentage of oxygen than normal. She had insisted on calibrating it manually, fiddling with the settings instead of just using the sonic, but she was at least not toppling over now. They were in the medical bay- they’d had to ransack it in the dark, since they couldn’t seem to access the lights- and Yaz was struggling to dispel a faint but persistent sense of unease, the source of which she couldn’t quite pinpoint. It seemed to lie somewhere in the Doctor’s expression. In the half-light the woman looked… off. There was no other way to describe it. Her eyes were wide and she sat on the hard bench, legs dangling limply off the side as she gripped the edge, breathing through the new machinery. Her eyebrows were knitted together with an expression that Yaz was so unused to seeing it took her a moment to recognise it. It looked awfully close to fear.

They’d only seen fear- true terror, not the regular kind of alarm they traded in on a daily basis- on the Doctor’s face once before. This was a watered-down version of that, and Yaz didn’t like it one bit. Her knuckles where white where she gripped the table, and her breathing was still laboured and unsteady as her body recovered from… whatever the entire hell had just happened. Yaz wasn’t sure she wanted to understand what the Doctor had meant but the meaning had been inescapably, grimly clear. Something had gone badly wrong during the teleport over, and now one of the Doctor’s vital organs was missing. It was such a disturbing mental image it almost strayed into comical, or perhaps slightly poetic- a lost heart, floating alone throughout the stars.

“So… how d’you lose a heart?” Ryan asked what they were all thinking, and Yaz felt like elbowing him. Couldn’t he read the obvious communication in the Doctor’s body language? She couldn’t blame him- not really, anyway, what with the Doctor’s recent sulky attitude, they had taken to asking blunter and blunter questions, but this was different. This wasn’t a bad mood, this was… something brand new, but familiar again, the trembling in her body, the wide, unfocused gaze. Her back arched and Yaz imagined any weight whatsoever falling on the Doctor now would shatter her. The time traveller shook her head in response to Ryan’s question, focussing on his face with what looked like a tremendous amount of effort and scraping together a pale smile. “Not sure,” she said, with an attempt at breeziness that sort of slowly trailed to the ground like a balloon losing air, “But I’m sure I’ll figure it out! Just gotta make sure I don’t do anything too physically strenuous until then.”

“Good thing we never have to do anything physically strenuous then,” Graham snorted, and Yaz caught that worried look in the Doctor’s expression for a moment, before it vanished behind another laborious fair-weather smile.

“We’ll just have to figure out the mystery nice and fast so we can get back to Faro,” the Doctor said airly, sliding off the desk with a poorly-disguised wince, “Let’s check the ship’s logs.”

The blonde alien ambled over to the screens and started tapping them, frowning in concentration. She patted her coat down and frowned, movements stilling for a moment before becoming increasingly frantic. “What?” she whispered, almost inaudibly, reaching inside the pockets and pulling out a fair few items that shouldn’t have reasonably fitted, including a small succulent, a collection of marbles, something labelled a “suit-in-a-can” and a copy of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”.

“Doctor?” Yaz asked warily, taking just one step closer to the woman, who had whipped her coat off and was now ransacking the inside pocket, and the blonde turned, eyes slightly frantic and over-bright.

“Right, errrrr,” the Doctor said in reply, drawing out the sound, in the way she did when she was trying to figure out how best to break the latest bombshell to the fam, “Uhhhhhhh, it, um. No…. no sonic.”

  
“What?” Graham asked, alarmed.

  
“Sonic’s gone,” the Doctor repeated, looking completely empty handed in front of the fam, in spite of the fact that one hand was full of coat and the other clutched at a dumbbell-shaped device that seemed to hold some sort of writhing green gas in each end. She looked so helplessly bereft and lost that Yaz almost felt the need to embrace her- in fact, she had started forwards with the intent to do so before she realised what she was doing, and she switched instead to holding out a hand to take the glass dumbbell. “Careful with that,” the Doctor said absently as she handed it to Yaz, expression once again distant, “It’s an Valdosian fishing lure. Very dangerous if you set it off near us, Valdos has some really crazy sea life.” She was frozen in the position she had been in when she admitted the missing sonic, coat still hanging limply in her hand.

“Doctor, what’s goin’ on?” Ryan asked, eyebrows raised hopefully. Their guide hadn’t been exactly forthcoming with answers lately, but… something was even more weird than usual. Yaz gingerly placed the lure on the medical bed and took the Doctor’s coat from her, a movement with seemed to shake the timelord out of her reverie. Once again she dredged up a smile, but each seemed even less convincing than the last. All they did was highlight the bags under her eyes, her pale colour- Yaz wondered if it was the light, or the Doctor’s current… condition- she was papery white, and looking just as substantive.

“Sorry, not sure! But that’s not unusual, right? Must’ve… dropped it on the teleporter when it activated,” she sounded more like she was convincing herself than any of them, “And when we go back, which… I can do, without the sonic, I’m sure, no problem, easy peasy, when we go back, it’ll… I’ll… I’ll…”

Yaz exchanged an alarmed glance with Ryan and Graham, and swept the coat around the Doctor, draping it over her shoulders. The woman was trembling- it was only very slight, but it was there. “ _Doctor_ ,” Yaz said urgently, and once again she started, staring at Her as if she’d only just noticed she was there. “Sorry!” she said, “Just still… getting used to, um. One heart. No idea how you lot manage.” She shrugged her arms back into her coat decidedly. “I’ll be fine, honest!” 

Yaz almost rolled her eyes at that, but she managed to just give a slightly skeptical look instead. The Doctor had really been very cagey recently, and this was a new level of deception. It was never outright lies, but something that wasn’t a lie wasn’t the same thing as honesty. The blonde had been skittering away from their questions, snarling and snapping like an irritated cat every time they had tried to pry, and on Orphan 55 she had almost bitten their heads off trying to hide the truth about the planet from them. But something was very clearly wrong with the Doctor, and this nervous shyness was hard to deal with in a different way. She was worried if they pushed too hard, she might fracture, so she sent Graham and Ryan a _stern_ warning glance, before joining the Doctor at the computer interface.

“It’s alright,” she said reassuringly, or at least she hoped that was where her tone landed, as she pulled her notebook out and leafed through, “Myles gave me the override codes for the system. Can you read these?” She passed the notebook to the Doctor, who seized on it eagerly, fingers tracing the letters and expression brightening into a genuine smile.

“Oh yeah! Yaz, _brilliant_ ,” she said, and Yaz glowed. The Doctor’s fingers skipped eagerly over the on-screen keyboard (which displayed an alphabet that Yaz didn’t recognise) and a moment layer new screens propped up. “Gotcha,” the Doctor said delightedly, and immediately started messing around. Lights went up in the room, and the fam got their first good look at the space, and-

“Er,” said Ryan, pointing unnecessarily. A glass screen had been smashed, the record of the event spelled out in shards that covered the floor in one half of the room. And something had carved very deep gouges in the wall, three trails of shredded metal each at least half an inch thick. The Doctor turned from the display to see what the humans were gawking at and her expression kicked into thoughtfulness, eyebrows knitting together as she ran across the circular space, stopped halfway to the wall with a grimace as she put her hand to her chest. “Right,” she croaked, straightening up and continuing at a more measured pace, eyes roving the wall hungrily as she approached.

“Any ideas on what could do something like that, Doc?” Graham asked, while Yaz turned her attention to the computer. She found, to her delight, that the system was designed with symbols rather than words, and she tapped on something that looked like the blueprints for the ship that Myles had showed her back on Faro.

“Several things,” the Doctor murmured somewhere behind her, in her soft, wondering voice- alert, and aware, but curious. Yaz smiled to herself. The Doctor couldn’t help herself, even when she was mad at them for some reason, or suffering from some… weird space malady or malfunction of technology. She was so drawn to anything unexplained.

The smile soon vanished as she tabbed through the various levels of the ship, grimacing. She didn’t need to read alien (or future) to know what she was looking at when substantial sections of the ship were flashing red. “Doctor,” she said, and in another moment the woman was back by her side, blonde hair entering her field of view and obscuring the display as she all but headbutted the screen in a bid to see what Yaz was looking at.

“Good find, Yaz,” she said, before frowning, “Well. Good find, but not excellent news, honestly,” she waved a hand and the ship’s layered decks flew into 3D space between her and Yaz and the boys. “We’re here,” she said, indicating a circular space in the dead centre of the vessel, “And all these red areas-” she indicated a patchwork of slowly pulsing crimson that dotted the entire ship- “Are labelled by the ship’s sensors as “catastrophically compromised”. Bit melodramatic, really.” She made a face.

“So that means…” Ryan said warily from the other side of the projection, eyes fixed on the nearest section of red, a corridor on the opposite side of the ship to where Yaz estimated they arrived.

“My guess is decompression, but I’d have to check to be sure.” The Doctor frowned, reaching into the model curiously. “I wonder if I can…” she tapped the layer, and a voice emitted from the console, making them all jump.

  
“--bandoning ship, it’s going to kill us all if we don’t get out. We already lost Fyra and Damien when the bulkhead was compromised on deck one. If anyone finds this, I’m so sorry. We had to risk it--”

“Come on, Caira, we don’t have time!”

“Captain Montgomory, out!”

The recording cut off ominously, and there was a heavy silence.

“Well,” the Doctor said slowly, eyes travelling over the plan of the ship, searching for something. Yaz followed her gaze and winced, realising what she was failing to find. “Oh, this better not be another T’Pring situation, Doctor,” she moaned. Ryan frowned, then looked over the plans and understood. “Oh,” he said, clearly remembering the blueprints he’d glanced over, “No life pods,” he said, and the Doctor nodded a grim confirmation. Graham looked alarmed. “So we’re stuck on this ship with god knows what on here, and no way of getting off!”

The Doctor was chewing her lip worriedly, fingers tapping her chin, before she seemed to realise something. “We can get off,” she said, “If we find out way to the teleport chamber. Which is....” she waved a finger around curiously, before jabbing at a spot towards the back of the ship, “here!”

She turned back to the screen for a moment, fingers tapping furiously against the glass, and a moment later a route illuminated itself, a golden thread leading through the stricken ship. “Easy peasy!” she said breathlessly, spreading her hands, “We just follow this route, get to the teleport chamber, and tell Faro to send out a search vessel for the life pods.”

“What about…” Yaz swallowed, not wanting to be a downer when the Doctor was looking almost excited, for once ( _Of course_ , Yaz thought, _it would be the mortal peril that did the trick_ ), “Whatever did that?” she nodded to the gouged wall, and the Doctor eyed it pensively, a wrinkle appearing in the middle of her forehead as her brain surely whirled with frantic machinations and half-formed theories. In the end, she shook her head slightly, letting out a nervous little breath.

“We’ll just have to go… very carefully,” she said.


	3. Crossed Wires

A spine-tingling growl echoed through the darkened corridors every so often as the fam crept along, the noise distorted oddly by the empty vessel, making it hard to tell where it was coming from. The Doctor had led them to the sealed-off section and, as she had predicted, the door was sealed shut, and the next section of the corridor had been depressurised- the wall of the ship had been torn partly open, and bits of shrapnel floated idly in the vacuum, bolts and scrap shards of metal spinning languidly and glinting in the starlight.

“Whatever it is,” Ryan muttered, glancing warily around them, “It obviously don’t need oxygen to survive.”

  
“Clever, Ryan,” the Doctor nodded approvingly, “If it’s still around, it can clearly survive the vacuum of space. Which means we need to think laterally when we’re trying to avoid it. It can move around the outside of the ship if it wants… but it mustn’t be able to move through space under it’s own steam, or else it would’ve left when the crew abandoned the ship.” She touched the glass door absently, eyes distant as the stars, “It’s marooned on this spaceship, like a castaway on a bit of driftwood in the middle of the ocean. It’s clinging to this ship because it’s the only solid ground there is for lightdays.”

They all looked somberly into the void, before the Doctor’s smile reappeared almost alarming as she spun to face them, and she bustled them away from the window. “Oh well, we’ll figure that out later!” she hissed in a hyperactive whisper, a constant stream of updates escaping her as they crept through the deserted corridors, as if she was a leaking pipe, “When we get back I can come back and sort whatever it is out, make sure it’s safe. Just as soon as I make sure we’re safe.”

Predictably, that plan fell apart pretty rapidly.

It started with an ominous absence of growls, and the Doctor stopped suddenly, eyes lifting. “It’s quiet,” she announced, her eyes roving the hallway.

“Maybe it got tired of being creepy and took a nap?” Ryan suggested weakly, as Graham drew closer to him worriedly.

“I think,” the Doctor breathed, before they heard a distant, echoing knocking noise, that shivered towards them down the metallic hull of the ship.

“I think it knows we’re here, run!” She set off, face twisted in pain as they tried to outpace the thudding noises, which were picking up speed and heading their way. “We need to get away from the outer wall of the ship!” the Doctor called, voice laced with panic and adrenaline. The humans followed her around a corner and through a door, which she slammed shut after them. She reached into her pocket, before letting off a growl of frustration, throwing her hands up in exasperation before sprinting after the fam. “I can’t lock anything after us, we need to get somewhere it’s not going to get us thrown out into space!” she gasped.

“This way!” Ryan said, swerving, “The blueprints- there was a fuel store, it’s close to the middle of the ship!”

“Wasn’t that further away from the teleport chamber?” Yaz interjected, as something behind them crashed and a growl, the closest they’d heard it yet, somehow still muted.

“Forget the teleport chamber, we’ve gotta be alive to tele-” Graham’s sentence was cut off by an ear-splitting crash and a metallic tearing noise. “Get back!” shouted the Doctor, throwing her arm out to stop Yaz and shoving her backwards as something fell through the ceiling between them and the boys.

It was hard to get a good look at it, but it was massive- it filled the hallway entirely, bristling with dark fur and spines. A whiplike tail lanced through the air with a crack and the Doctor was thrown to the floor with a shout. “Doctor!” Yaz shouted over the snarling that was now filling the space. Graham and Ryan were nowhere to be seen.

“Split up!” Ryan’s voice came from the other side, “Meet at the fuel hub!”

The Doctor was on her feet again already, clutching her middle where the creature had hit her. There was a snarling noise as the whatever-it-was appeared to be undecided as to which pair to follow, and Yaz gave her a terrified yank, trying to help the winded timelord get moving. They both ducked the tail again, which tore a gash across the wall, and they retreated, the Doctor gazing anxiously at the direction Ryan and Graham had taken off in.

“What about-”

“They’ll be okay,” Yaz insisted firmly, “We need to get you somewhere you can catch your breath, or you’re going to do yourself in.”

“Good idea,” mumbled the Doctor as they fled.

***

“C’mon, Ryan, you’re doing great!” gasped Graham, as they half-ran, half-tumbled down the corridors, the monster hot on their heels, “Just- keep goin’, we’re gonna-” he was cut off by a crash and he shouted as a section of ceiling fell almost on top of him- a quick dodge to the side saved him from being crushed. The alien was gaining. Ryan was pushing harder and harder, but whatever was chasing them had longer legs on it.

“Here!” Graham yelled, borderline tackling Ryan into a smaller side room. “It wont be able to follow us here as easily-” he breathed, before realising that the room didn’t have any other exits. The alien’s skull-like snout pushed into the room and it snapped at them, but it’s shoulders jammed the door and it snarled in what they could only assume was frustration.

  
“It’s gonna get in!” Ryan realised, panicked, as the door-frame began to bend.

“I-I-I’m sorry, son!” Graham gasped, casting his eyes frantically around the space, but before he could even begin to formulate what to do with what he really could only assume were space-age cleaning supplies, a thunder of footsteps and a familiar voice sounded down the corridor.

“Oi!”

“The Doctor!” Ryan said, and Graham sagged with relief. The alien withdrew it’s head from the door, and they cautiously crept forwards. The blonde was facing off with the massive creature, expression tight with concentration as she brandished some sort of weapon at it. “Try this on for size,” she snarled, before slamming her palm into the side of it. A spark leapt from the barrel of the device and struck the creature’s shoulder.

The Doctor was lit with the flash of an electrical arc, the force of the discharge blowing her blonde hair all around her face like the halo of an avenging angel, the flash picking out taught lines in her face. Ryan and Graham both gaped, open-mouthed, as the creature shrieked a bone-chilling call and retreated, it’s footsteps fading into distant echoes as it went

“Are you alright?” demanded the Doctor harshly, rounding on them.

“What happened to no guns?” Ryan asked by way of an answer, still flabbergasted. The Doctor chucked the device at him. “It’s just a Tesla arc,” she said dismissively, “it won’t do it any serious damage, and it’ll stop that thing doing serious damage to us. Problem?”

Graham and Ryan exchanged a glance.

“Well, Doc, it’s just that…” Graham began awkwardly, “You seemed a bit freaked out earlier, in the medical bay… are you sure you’re feeling alright?”

“Where’s Yaz?” Ryan interrupted suddenly, before the Doctor could answer. 

“I lost track of her,” the Doctor said, appearing less concerned than could reasonably be expected. 

“What, with that thing wandering around?” Graham gaped disbelievingly, “What is something happens to her? We’ve gotta find her!”

“You two should head to the teleport chamber,” the Doctor said grimly, “I’ll find Yaz.”

“Wait, Doctor,” Ryan said, holding the tesla-gun gingerly, “I don’t think I-”

“You’ll figure it out, Ryan,” she said firmly, already striding purposefully off into the gloom. “Just stay alive,” she advised, calling back to them over her shoulder.

***

“Which way did Ryan and Graham go?” moaned the Doctor, collapsing heavily against the wall of what looked to be a store cupboard and sliding down it, face twisted in pain. Yaz shook her head helplessly, panting.

  
“Dunno, but they were together. They’ll be okay, they’re gonna be fine.”

“Yaz, I can’t do this! I-” the Doctor looked truly panicked, her breath racing and her body trembling, “It’s too hard, I can’t think- my brain is… so slow like this, I-” She seemed to be trying to retreat in on herself, tucking her legs to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. Gently, carefully in the crammed space, Yaz knelt so she was eye level with the stricken timelord, one knee touching the ground and the other resting against the Doctor’s own, 

“Doctor,” Yaz took the timelord by the shoulders, tone reassuring, “You’ve gotta calm down. Breathe with me, okay?” She waited until hazel eyes had met hers and she started counting breaths in and out. Slowly, the Doctor’s chest began to rise and fall in time with her’s, and she felt the trembling still beneath her hands. She was cold, colder even than usual, and Yaz rubbed her hands slowly around the Doctor’s shoulders, trying to imbue some warmth into the woman. There wasn’t a lot of room and she suddenly became aware of how close their bodies were- she was looming over the Doctor, and a protectiveness she wasn’t used to was stirring in her chest- she wanted to scoop the woman into her arms and hold her until she felt safe again. But they hadn’t the luxury.

“If anyone can figure this out with only half as much brainpower as usual, it’s you,” Yaz said firmly, “We’re going to be okay. We’ve just gotta get to the teleport chamber, okay?”

The Doctor’s gaze was clinging to Yaz’s expression, desperate. She looked like a child desperately seeking reassurance from something, and it was deeply unsettling- normally, it was the other way around. Yaz turned away from the Doctor for just a moment, listening intently as a horrific shriek echoed through the ship. The Doctor froze.

“That sounded like…”

“Pain,” the Doctor breathed, sitting up a little straighter, “It’s in pain. They must’ve… found some way of hurting it?” Her expression wrinkled slightly, looking caught between disapproval and worry. She started to get up- Yaz quickly got out of the way, feeling a little embarrassed- but she sagged to the side, groaning and holding her middle. “I’m not as robust as usual,” she croaked, spare hand clinging to a shelf, “That running alone almost took me out. The extra oxygen going in can’t compensate for how slowly it’s getting circulated.” She did look incredibly pale, even accounting for the lighting, Yaz thought, and her eyes were glazed and unfocused and… again, scared. “Yaz,” she breathed, shaking her head, “I think I’m slowing you up. It might be better if you-”

“Don’t even _think_ about finishing that sentence, Doctor,” Yaz said heatedly, surprising herself with an unexpected flare of temper that vanished as quickly as it had come as she turned back to the alien, frowning, “Why the hell would we leave you when you’re ill, what kind of friends d’you think we are?”

The Doctor looked stricken, and Yaz wondered if she’d been too harsh. A smile slipped onto her perfect features but it was tearful, and fragile looking. “You’re very good friends, actually,” whispered the Doctor, “The best I could ask for.” Yaz suddenly wondered if there was something else going on, besides the loss of a heart. Or maybe the lack of oxygen to the Doctor’s brain was lowering her guard, making her a little loopy. She felt determination solidify in her chest. “Don’t go getting sentimental right now, Doctor,” she said firmly, feeling oddly responsible. The Doctor clearly wasn’t in her right mind so- no matter how nice it was to hear, she would make sure the woman didn’t say anything she’d regret. They had all found out how much she valued her privacy and, well. As frustrating as it was to never know what was going on, she wanted anything that the Doctor shared with them to be… genuine. It would be in bad faith to take her at face value right now.

“You should stay here and rest a minute,” she insisted, straightening up, “I’ll go and see if I can find the boys. It sounds like that thing is going to be licking it’s wounds for a while, so we can regroup and figure out what to do next.”

“Please be safe,” begged the Doctor, and Yaz looked back over her shoulder, flashing a reassuring smile, “I’ll be back before you know it, don’t you worry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> boy that last chapter sure had some Errors, huh? you'd think I'd learn my lesson and proof-read this one but sadly that is just not my brand, sorry readers


	4. Hide and Seek

Yaz’s breathing was uncomfortably loud in her ears as she crept through the ship, torn between a need to run and find the boys and a careful, deliberate pacing to avoid letting the creature hear her. The background of growls and snarls had subsided, and she had to assume that whatever they had done to it, it had gone somewhere to recover. The Doctor’s explanation of the creature- stuck on the ship with no way off- sent a pang through Yaz’s heart, and she realised that the Doctor’s conscience, one that extended past the bounds of anything she Ryan and Graham would find monstrous, was catching. Whatever the creature was, it was trapped, afraid and confused. She hoped they’d be able to help it without it killing them- or without them having to hurt it too badly.

A single set of footsteps approached and she paused, expression wrinkled in confusion as a familiar figure approached her down a flight of stairs.

  
“Doctor?” she asked, glancing back the way she had come, “How did you get there? Weren’t you gonna wait?”

The lights were behind the timelord, so her face wasn’t visible, but something in her posture was off. She cut an oddly intimidating figure, towering over Yaz, nothing in her face visible apart from a sharp gleam of lights off her eyes.

“No time to wait,” the Doctor said, stillness interrupted as she descended the stairs heavily, boots making a racket in the quiet ship, “I walked here. How’re you holding up?”

She watched Yaz with laser focus, face full of keen interest as she peered at the human. Yaz was at a loss- the woman she’d left trembling in a small cupboard shouldn’t have been able to stand up so calmly and confidently mere minutes later. “I’m fine,” she said cautiously, frowning, “How’re _you_ holding up? Are you feeling.... Better? You looked a bit ropey back there for a second. Uh, no offense.”

The Doctor listened intently, and Yaz had the odd sensation of being examined, being looked at like a specimen on a microscope plate- or a cadaver on a table. “Must be the lack of oxygen,” the blonde said at length, “But I’m right as rain now, Yaz, and I’m gonna get us all out of here just fine, don’t you worry.”

“Right,” Yaz said, wishing she believed her. “Have you had any thoughts about the creature?”

The Doctor shrugged dismissively, “Let’s get us safe, first. You lot are more important.”

Something about the blithe gesture, the cool, calculated tone- it sent a shiver down Yaz’s spine. “Are you sure you’re feeling alright?” she pressed, as the Doctor started walking decisively. Yaz hurried to follow her, thoughts racing. The Doctor nodded, pausing and throwing Yaz a smile.. Yaz felt one spring into place in return, relief flooding her. The Doctor had been acting oddly recently, but at the end of the day, she’d get them all home safe. “Nothing to worry about, Yaz,” she promised, voice calm and reassuring. Selfishly, Yaz couldn’t help but feel grateful the Doctor seemed back to knowing what to do. “Would I ever let you down?”

  
  


***

“Do you think it’s the lack of oxygen?” Ryan asked, as he and Graham squinted at a sign in some alien language. The older man shrugged worriedly, baring his teeth in a grimace. “Dunno. Maybe. Or maybe she’s…” his sentence trailed into nothing, as he tried and failed to come up with an explanation as to how their famously pacifistic friend had suddenly broken one of her biggest rules. The Doctor didn’t seem to much care for some rules- _don’t touch anything_ , she’d say, right before diving bodily into the past or facechecking dirt with her mouth- but “no guns” seemed pretty solidly up there.

Ryan was gingerly cradling the thing, and excitement at being given an alien firearm having long faded into almost as much of a dislike for them as the Doctor’s. After so much travelling and so much danger, he no longer appreciated anything that could cause so much harm so quickly- even when it was to some creature that seemed intent on putting it’s claws directly through their eyeballs. Being tossed it so casually by the time traveller had both him and Graham truly rattled.

“It couldn’t be to do with…. With the mood she’s been in lately, could it?” Ryan wondered haltingly, glancing around guiltily as if expecting to be caught talking by a teacher. Graham shrugged facially, shaking his head.

  
“I can’t see her ever being in that bad a mood,” the old man sad, expression pensive, “If she ever was, god help us all.” His voice was dark, and he wrinkled his nose irritably at the indecipherable sign and set off decisively down a corridor.

“Are we lost?” Ryan asked, but Graham was saved the necessity of answering by the arrival of the Doctor. “If you have to ask,” she said, grinning lopsidedly, “You probably are. Especially since this is the opposite direction to the fuel hub,” she added.

They both turned to see her limping towards them, a grin sliding from her features as she surveyed them. “Is… Yaz not with you?” she asked, crestfallen. Ryan and Graham exchanged worried glances.

“You went to look for her, remember?” Ryan said worriedly, “And we were heading to the teleport chamber to meet you guys…” 

The Doctor’s expression froze in alarm, and she shook her head. “No,” she whispered, eyes wide. The fear was replaced by irritation as her gaze found the gun in Ryan’s hands. “Ryan!” she said admonishingly, yanking it from his grip and tossing it down the corridor, where it span along the floor and came to a stop some metres away. Ryan looked affronted.

“Doc, you gave that to him!” Graham leapt to his grandson’s defence, and the Doctor let out a dismissive snort. “Don’t be ridiculous, why would I do that?” she asked, but Ryan held his hand out.

“Doctor, I’m telling ya,” he said seriously, “ _You_ gave that to me.” The diminutive time traveller peered up at him, looking at a loss. “I- I-” she knotted a hand into her hair, shaking her head, “I don’t remember,” she breathed, looking between them in a panic, “Why- why can’t I remember?”

“Doc, calm down, yeah,” Graham said, alarmed, as Ryan put a hand out to steady the timelord, whose body was rolling with gasping breaths, “It- it’s just the lack of oxygen, right? You- you need to stay calm, remember?”

The Doctor blinked at him, focussing on his face, but a moment later there was an alarmingly loud growl nearby. She whipped around, searching for a sign of the monster, and Graham and Ryan jumped. “That sounded close, Doc,” Graham groaned, and she nodded wordlessly, tight-lipped with fear.

“Head to the fuel hub,” she muttered tightly, setting off in the opposite direction. “Doctor, you’re not well-” Ryan started to protest, but she spun around, expression wild. “Just **_go_ **!” she bellowed, and they winced, complying without any further protest.

***

A roar echoed through the ship, and the Doctor glanced around sharply, stepping quickly in front of Yaz, putting herself between the young police officer and the noise. “Yaz, go,” she barked sharply, and Yaz shook her head. “Doctor, your heart,” she murmured, and the Doctor turned to her, expression serious. “Yaz, I care way more about keeping you safe. I’ll be fine, that’s my job.”

Yaz still looked unhappy, so the Doctor turned to face her, striding a few paces forwards to close the gap. “Yaz, I’m alright. I promise. Something strange _is_ happening here- I can see it in your eyes. I can feel it. Something to do with… something to do with me. But you’re brave, and clever, and I know you can do this. Meet Ryan and Graham at the teleport chamber. I need to find the creature and figure out what it wants.”

Yaz swallowed and nodded, standing up straighter. “Stay alive for me, Yasmin Khan,” the Doctor said, gaze lingering on her face for a second before striding past her. Yaz started moving, feeling her resolve strengthen. She wouldn’t let the Doctor down.

“Oh, and keep an eye out, Yaz,” the Doctor added, almost out of sight. She was still strolling, almost casually, sonic firmly in hand. “I don't think it's just us and the monster here.”

***

The Doctor’s head was spinning as she ran from the creature, chest aching painfully as her remaining heart laboured fitfully to keep up. She half-fell down a flight of stairs, and the creature careened around the corner and crashed almost directly on top of her. A heavy limb came down on her arm and a cry of pain ripped itself free from her lips as she felt a nasty crunch. The monster lowered it’s face and shrieked at her as she struggled, vision clouding at the edges.

She closed her eyes.

The impact she was waiting for never came. A new noise, something similar in it’s construction to the monster’s shriek but more tonal, echoed through the ship. The noise set the Doctor’s teeth vibrating and pulsed painfully through her already-throbbing head. She gasped in renewed pain as she sat up, the pressure on her arm suddenly gone as the monster moved away from her, lifting it’s head curiously.

The Doctor could barely move as she watched it amble away, letting out new noises as it went. She struggled to sit upright, her left arm aching dully with every movement. Vaguely, she wondered if she should go to the med bay, before shaking her head unsteadily. Tottering onto two feet, she lent heavily into the wall, gripping her injured arm tightly. This was getting harder by the second. She should’ve stayed put where Yaz had left her, but the quiet and the loneliness had sent her back into a panic. And now she was alone, exposed, with no idea where any of her fam were, no guarantee any of them were safe.

“Please be okay,” she whispered, closing her eyes against the spinning corridor and letting her head gently meet the wall.

“What the hell happned?”

It was Yaz. The Doctor’s eyes snapped open, relief flooding her. “Yaz,” she gasped, taking a step forwards before she remembered her state. She stumbled and crashed to her knees with a groan. “Still not adjusted,” she mumbled, shuffling to the wall and clawing her way back up, collapsing backwards into it as soon as she was upright again and giving Yaz a wobbly smile.

The expression Yaz levelled at her turned her blood cold in her remaining heart.

“What’s going on, _Doctor_?” the woman demanded, lips pursed and arms folded.


	5. Rabbit Hole

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did edit something into last chapter to make this one make a little more sense, namely Yaz spotting dark!13's sonic.

Yaz was convinced that something was wrong. The Doctor was gazing at her pitifully, eyes wide and doe-like, and she felt heartless, but the woman’s own words were ringing in her ears.  _ Be careful _ . Wasn’t it a little convenient, for the Doctor to need them so badly, in a way she never had before? Wasn’t it a little too perfect, a little contrived? If someone was trying to tug on her heartstrings and lower her guard, well, this would be the easiest way to do it. And then there was the matter of the vanishing sonic- surely, if she had found it, she would’ve said something.

“Where’s your sonic?” she asked flatly. The Doctor looked bewildered.

“I- I don’t know,” she said helplessly, “I- I told you. Yaz,” the Doctor whispered her name as if it was a prayer to cling to, voice shaking, “What-”

  
“Don’t,” Yaz interrupted through gritted teeth, ignoring the wounded shock on the Doctor’s face. She wasn’t sure what she could trust right now. Something odd was going on, and she had a nasty feeling that the person she was looking at somehow wasn’t the Doctor at all. How often did the Doctor lose control? Since when did she panic and cry? She wanted to believe that this was the Doctor, and that everything was normal, but… 

“I don’t know what’s going on right now,” she said firmly, ignoring the pangs that went through her chest at the Doctor’s hurt expression, “But I think the best thing is if you… don’t leave my sight again. And… don’t argue. If it really is you, then… I need you to just. Stay with me. Can you do that?”

The Doctor was wearing the same expression of disbelieving shock that she had worn when she had discovered O’s true identity, and it hurt. Hazel eyes roved Yaz’s face desperately, eyebrows pulled in disbelief and mouth open in a silent gasp of shock. Something shuttered behind her eyes and she closed her mouth and stood a little straighter, expression glazing coldly over with a barely perceptible nod. Yaz couldn’t tell if it was broken trust or a blown cover. But the maybe-Doctor didn’t look to be offering up any protest anytime soon, so she shelved that question.

“Right,” muttered Yaz, more to herself than anyone else, “Fuel hub.”

***

“Yaz!” Ryan sighed with relief, as he and Graham hurried finally into the fuel room. The young man instantly buried Yaz in a hug, before turning to look around the space. “Did the Doctor find you?” He asked curiously, spotting the time traveller lent stonily against a wall, watching them all with an odd expression on her face. Yaz pressed her lips together and glanced between the Doctor and Ryan and Graham, inclining her head towards a door.

“Stay here,” she said firmly to the Doctor, who just glared at her mutinously, eyes glittering as she shifted restlessly on the spot. Yaz held the timelord’s gaze for a long, taut second that stretched uncomfortably out between them, before turning and walking into the hallway. Graham and Ryan followed her out into the corridor, perplexed. “What’s going on?” Graham asked worriedly, casting a glance towards the closed door.

“I don’t know,” Yaz started, the picture of tension, “But I don’t think that that’s the Doctor.”

“You what?” Graham was nonplussed, and him and Ryan exchanged a glance.

“Or, maybe it is but  _ something  _ weird’s going on.”

“That… might be right,” Ryan said slowly, clearly thinking carefully, “She- she gave us a gun,” he said seriously to Yaz, and her eyebrows shot up, “But then she didn’t remember givin’ it to us later… It’s proper weird.”

“Yeah I mean- she forgot… an entire conversation,” Graham said uneasily, and all three humans gazed anxiously through the door. In the dimly lit slice of the room they could see through the glass, the timelord was sat against the wall, head hanging limply between her shoulders with her arms resting on her knees. It certainly looked like the Doctor, but…

***

The Doctor could feel the singular heartbeat in her chest. It had been aching like a leaden lump for some time now, the extra work required of it giving her literal heartache. But worse than that was the suspicion in Yaz, Graham and Ryan’s eyes. She was  _ sure  _ she remembered everything, but she wasn’t in her right mind right now. All she could hear was her heartbeat, suddenly empty of a second set of pulses. In the stretching silence, she almost imagined she could hear the phantom beats of her missing heart.

She sat up straighter with a gasp. She wasn’t imagining it. She could hear them, echoing out through her subconscious. She could almost _ feel _ it in her chest, where it was missing. And where her remaining heart was, someone else’s chest was cold and empty. She focussed in on the sound, searching with her mind, until finally she brushed against another awareness, impossibly familiar, utterly impossible.

_ Contact _ , she thought, eyes wide with horror at something she wasn’t able to see, but could instantly recognise.

_ Contact _ , echoed her own voice back at her. Except it wasn’t hers, not how she sounded. It was low, and cold, and the presence in her mind that accompanied it was as infallible and icy as the depths of space.

“What are you?” She whispered, voice cracked and dry. A sensation of a sharp grin and a derisive snort came to her, and that terrible, cold version of her own voice came back at her.

“I’m  _ you _ ,” it replied smoothly, “Can’t you feel it? I’m surprised you can’t- you’re so full of feelings, after all.” The other-her was smug, and it dripped through the Doctor’s mind like tar, “You’re so full of feelings that you’re letting them control you. And now they’re realising, you’re not what you pretended to be.”

The Doctor looked anxiously to the door, to where the three humans were stood talking. Discussing her. Discussing what to do.

“They trust  _ me _ , you know,” the voice purred, “If only you would too. It’d make everything so much easier.”

“You don’t make things easier,” she hissed vehemently, “You just ignore the consequences. That’s not the same thing.”

“Don’t talk to me about consequences,” the dark voice warned, full of contained thunder, “You would let all of time and space burn to save one world. You would rip everything apart to save a single human life. You’re not _ good _ , Doctor, you’re just scared.”

“What are you, then?” she asked, voice ragged and harsh as she tried to get herself under control. She was failing on that front in more ways than one. “Are you the saviour? The bloodstained hero? The timelord vainglorious?” She shook her head furiously, “You think you’re the one to decide the fate of the universe? You think it’s fair to make that decision?”

“Don’t moralise at me,” the voice advised cooly, lancing sharply into her head, “All of your wisdom, all the things you’ve seen, and you still can’t see the bigger picture. You still think that it’s possible to be good and just. If that’s what you want, you’ll have to be ready to accept the collateral damage when you can’t protect the people who followed you into danger.”

The Doctor’s eyes flashed fearfully to her human companions, still arguing outside. “Don’t you dare,” she said, voice low and shaking, “Don’t you dare hurt them, or I swear to you-”

“You’ll what?” The voice asked, and she could imagine cold hazel eyes, a raised eyebrow taunting her, as she had done so many times, when she was sure she had the upper hand. It only now occurred to her how it felt to be the mouse, batted helplessly around by the cat’s paw. “You’ll kill me? Come on, Doctor, we know that’s not your style. And letting the people closest to me die isn’t _ my  _ style. That part-” The Doctor gasped as memories were forced on her- faces of the people she’d let down, the people she’d let die, tearing into her like thorns from a rose bush- “That’s all you.”

“Get out of my head-” she snarled, lurching upright and falling immediately forwards, landing against a metallic cage full of cases of fuel cells, “Get out of my head-” the telepathic link shivered and snapped, and she was left with her heart racing, as the humans looked at her worriedly through the door. They looked almost hostile, gazes flicking over her suspiciously, and her heart hammered suddenly with fear- the other her had got to them, had got them on side, and now they thought she was the imposter.

She locked gazes with Yaz for a long moment, every nerve in her battered body humming with tension. It was an intimate moment of communication, without the need for telepathy. The Doctor was pleading, her eyes filled with desperation, with fear and the need for understanding. But Yaz’s gaze never broke, never relented. Only fearful suspicion, a wrinkle in her forehead as she regarded the Doctor, clearly trying to predict what she’d do. Like two rival street cats they sized each other up, waiting to see which way the other would run.

In the end the Doctor’s nerve broke first.

She turned and bolted, tears of panic half-blinding her as she crashed from the room, hearing the shouts of the fam as she fled. In her chest her solo heart fluttered like a panicked bird, trapped and downed under too heavy a load. She heard shouting following her, and pounding footsteps. Normally she could’ve outrun them easily, but in her current state they’d catch up to her. Her breath was coming in shallow, pained gasps as she rounded a corner and collapsed into a wall, the panic of a cornered animal jolting her limbs into fruitless motion as she tried to keep moving, desperate uncontrollable panic racing to overtake any rational thought as a set of footsteps approached.

Yaz rounded the corner and the Doctor turned, doubled over in pain and exhaustion, betrayal forcing her into a defeated slump. The young woman’s face was stretched with unhappiness, but there was no trust whatsoever in her gaze- only pity.

“You realise how this looks, right?” Yaz said, “You shouting and running away like that? How the hell did you think we were gonna believe you were the Doctor?”

“But-” she shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to reach for something,  _ anything _ , that could provide Yaz with some proof. “I’m me,” she insisted, voice hideously plaintive in her throat. “I- I can explain what’s happened, I- I’ve been split in half, an-and the other half of me-”

“The other half of you? You mean the one who actually knew what she was doing?”

“Yaz, I-”

“Don’t make this any harder than it already is,” Yaz insisted, expression troubled. The Doctor felt a tiny spark of hope flare.

“Yaz, you’re not totally convinced,” she breathed, staggering forwards, “You- you know I’m me, you do, you-”

Yaz shook her head sadly. “I don’t know that, Doctor. And I’m sorry, but until I do, until I know we can trust you-” she bit her lip, and the Doctor felt a cold fear spreading through her chest.

“You’re going to try and contain me,” she said faintly, staring, horrified, at her companion, her  _ friend _ , “You-” she shook her head, feeling utterly powerless and  _ hating it _ . She couldn’t convince them and she wouldn’t be able to stop them. Whatever they had decided to do, whatever the other her had planted in their minds, she wouldn’t be able to stop them. She felt sick.

The corridor lurched sideways as she felt any strength leaving her limbs. “Yaz, please, you have to listen to me,” she said, trying and failing to focus on her friend through her swimming vision, staggering forwards to clutch at Yaz’s arms, “Nnngh- I- I- I need you to trust me, please!”

The police officer just gently twisted her arms until she held the doctor’s arms in her hands, the human’s skin even warmer than usual against her bloodless wrists, and she sank to her knees, any will to fight leaving her, sick with betrayal and exhaustion. “Yaz, please,” she pleaded, voice speeding up as she heard Ryan and Graham approaching, having finally tracked them down, “Please don’t do this, I’m begging you, I’ll do anything you want, I- I can make you immortal, I can give you anything, just don’t do this don’t leave me here please-” 

An involuntary scream of panic so fierce that it tore at her throat ripped through her as she was manhandled away from Yaz, and she threw her body into protest, flailing and twisting like a doomed ibex in the jaws of a predator. “Ryan, Graham,” She twisted her head, trying to see their faces, searching for anything resembling sympathy or trust, but they wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Graham please, please, you don’t have to do this just stop a minute-”

She was deposited, still protesting, back in the med bay. She hadn’t even realised she was back there. She launched a frantic assault on the door, punctuated with cries of frustration, but all the fam did was watch her, and she realised with a sinking heart that her panic was what had made them doubt her. Her senses finally caught up with her emotions and she realised she’d ruined a hand, and she cradled the useless, throbbing limb to her chest, shallow breaths fogging up the glass.

A door opened behind her, and her head whipped around, eyes wide and-

Another one of her strode coolly into the room, eyebrow raised dismissively as she took her in. “Well spotted, fam,” she called over her head, and the Doctor couldn’t even bring herself to turn to look at Ryan, Yaz and Graham’s reactions. She was transfixed, horrified, as the other her reached into her pocket and pulled out the sonic. She heard the doors around the room click shut. 

“I’ll handle this from here,” announced the new arrival imperiously, gazing disdainfully down at her crumpled double on the floor.


	6. Jekyll and Hyde

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter involves the Doctor's two halves interacting and features a lot of self-hatred and negative self thoughts, and stuff that could def be upsetting for anyone who struggles with suicidal thoughts so just be warned. This isn't a suicidal doctor fic but when the doctor's two personas are separate people it could def be construed as crossing into that territory so just please be careful <3

On the surface it was a familiar smile- sharp eyebrows framing intelligent hazel eyes and twitching lips. But something in that face was almost predatory- those bright eyes that never missed anything were suddenly cataloguing and analytical, in the detached air of a scientist surveying an experiment. Yaz felt the shock as if she had been thrown into space, cold and airless in her chest as she stared disbelievingly at the other Doctor.

“That’s not the Doctor either,” Ryan said slowly, shaking his head as they stared at the double. Yaz felt as if her brain was trying to move through treacle, thoughts slow and disjointed as she struggled desperately to form a coherent idea of what was going on. Both Doctors turned to look at his words: one crumpled on the floor, face covered in tear marks and a broken, useless hand held to her chest, the other towering over her, expression distant. “Ryan,” croaked the one on the ground, “ _I’m_ the Doctor.”

“This is tedious,” sighed the other, rolling her eyes and taking a step towards the glass door. The Doctor on the floor scrambled away, limbs awkward with the effort of movement as she distanced herself from her counterpart, flailing around, grasping for a safety that wasn’t there. The eerily calm one paid no mind to her movements, instead stepping forwards to examine the fam through the glass. Yaz tried the door but it was inaccessible.

“You wont get through that,” the cold Doctor promised, hazel eyes flicking to the lock, then to her panicked double, then back to the fam, “I sealed the doors. Don’t want her getting out and causing havoc.”

“You’re the one who’s been causing havoc,” breathed the other, shaking her head, a familiar wrinkle in her forehead as she gazed at herself across the room, “You’re the one who gave them a gun. The Doctor doesn’t use guns.”

“ _The Doctor_ ,” snarled the cold Doctor, showing the first hint of emotion, rounding on her and striding forwards menacingly, “doesn’t let her friends die. Or at least, _I_ don’t.” She loomed over her scared-looking counterpart, who shrunk away in a very undoctorlike fashion, the lines of her body tensed as if she were a rabbit about to take flight from a snake. “ _You_ let your friends die all the time. But I’m going to make sure I keep them alive,” she glanced at the fam, and Yaz felt numb panic descend on her as those hazel eyes found hers, her vision clouding at the edges. She gripped Ryan’s arm for support.

“And since I can tell I can’t depend on you at all, I’ll do it without you.”

“Hang on,” Graham interrupted, and Yaz felt a rush of gratitude towards the old man, “What’s going on? Where’s the Doctor? Who are you two?”

Two pairs of eyes turned onto him. One pair was wide and watery, set in a face that was weary and terrified, clearly about to try and give a flurry of assurances and pleas. But the cold Doctor got there first, lifting her chin slightly, in that air she took when she was speaking to a king who was too arrogant, a CEO who was cruel, an alien needlessly causing suffering. Her ramrod straight back and squared shoulders made her look almost like a solider, or a commander, and Yaz shivered.

“ _I’m_ the Doctor,” she said insistently, before looking at the softer, bent lines of her double, “That _was_ a part of me- a part of me that’s gotten everyone I ever cared about killed. A part I’ve been trying to overcome.” She stepped towards the other menacingly, gaze unthinkably cold. Yaz felt like she wouldn’t survive being looked at like that by the Doctor- it was intense enough to strip paint from metal, cold enough to freeze on contact. It looked to be having a similar effect on the softer Doctor, who was practically cowering under the glare, eyes wide with a fearful expression that haunted her features as she shook her head slightly, backing away. Words seemed, for the second time ever, to have escaped her, and Yaz found herself willing the warmer Doctor to offer up some sort of defense, some sort of denial.

“You’re wrong,” the woman said weakly, as her back met the wall. The other Doctor had walked her into a corner, expression thunderous, and suddenly the one who had been crying was as quiet as the dangerously calm one. She was still looking exhausted, holding her injured arm, clearly in no position to mount any resistance other than a thin, quiet protest, “You don’t want to get rid of me. You’re _scared_ of me. Because I hold you to account.”

The colder Doctor slammed a fist unexpectedly into the wall next to the other Doctor’s head, and the warm Doctor flinched, along with Yaz, Ryan and Graham. Yaz felt panic setting in as she watched the cold Doctor, the one she had thought seemed calmer and rational, devolve into fury. She seized the injured Doctor by the hair, and with shocking efficiency, threw her to the ground. She hit the floor hard, and Yaz felt herself move forwards, throwing her weight into the door. Ryan was banging his fists on it too, and she knew he was thinking the same as she was.

They’d trapped the wrong Doctor.

***

Sharp, lancing pains shot through her injured arm as she hit the ground, and she let out a surprised shout of pain. She knew her other side hated her, but she had underestimated the strength of the fury. In spite of herself, she felt a wheezing laugh escape from her, even as she gasped for breath. Laboriously, she got a hand on the floor and levered herself up to stare into her own furious eyes. The expression on her double’s face hadn’t changed at all- she was glaring down at her with cold hatred, and the Doctor was sure laughing at her wasn’t an especially safe move, but she couldn’t help it.

“So afraid,” she breathed, shaking her head as she started to sit up, “So scared because you know I’m right. You can’t run from me, you have to-”

She was interrupted by another sudden movement from her double, who swept down and seized the front of her coat, lifting her upright and slamming her into the wall. Spots obscured her vision as sharp agony shot through her again, and her sentence was cut off into a wheezeing cough of pain. “You don’t get to decide,” the dark Doctor snarled, inches from her face, “You’re not in control anymore. That’s why you can’t stand for panicking. It’s why they abandoned you. You can’t control your emotions. You let them stop you from doing what needs to be done. You think I’m scared, but you’re just as afraid.”

The Doctor’s vision was hazy as she stared at her own face, shaking her head slightly, the fear that had left her briefly returning full force. She knew those eyes, she knew that anger. She remembered being whole and wanting to tear out her own hearts and discard them, let them take their pain away and go somewhere where they couldn’t bother her, where they couldn’t hurt her. She knew that this was the person who had burned planets and let galaxies fail, the person who could kill and had and would again. And she was right, that side of herself scared her.

And now, she was at it’s mercy and she knew suddenly, at the exact same moment that the mirror of her face seemed to realise it, what she would do. If given the opportunity, she knew exactly what the merciless, cold, ancient part of her personality would do.

“You can’t be both of us,” she whispered, shaking her head. Suddenly it was about more than her own life, her own pitiful right to exist. What could the Doctor do, if her conscience became uncoupled? If her compassion and kindness died?

She could already see the fires that would rage across time and space reflected in eyes that were both hers and not hers.

“I’ll be better than both of us,” snarled the other, and the Doctor felt her heart starting to race. Her head spun. “You can’t,” she gasped, shaking her head, “You-”

She was too weak. The panic was leeching energy from her- the faster her heart went, the closer she got to passing out. Adrenaline shot through her strained body and she twitched, trying uselessly to wriggle from the vice-like grip of her other side. She had sometimes wondered if she’d die by her own hand. She had expected it to be less literal- more hubris or lack of foresight, than simply being erased for the convenience of her perceived job, her role as the arbiter of the universe. She couldn’t let that version of her walk away from here without her.

She could hear the fam struggling furiously to get the door open. She had failed them. Somehow, all of her worst instincts had gotten away from her, and now she was facing her very literal demons. She wondered if she’d been kidding herself thinking she could contain them.

The demon in question had clearly had enough of her struggles, ineffectual though they were, because she yanked her away from the wall with a snarl. “You can’t fight me,” she hissed vehemently, somewhere above the Doctor’s head, twisting her broken arm behind her. The Doctor nearly felt the ground pulling at her navel, nearly going completely limp with the pain as her other arm was forced behind her back as well. She was dragged roughly over to the medical bench and thrown onto it. Before she’d had a second to try and launch some sort of escape, the sonic, _her_ sonic, hummed and the machine leapt to life, restraining her. She gasped and thrashed against the confinement, eyes wild with fear as she tried to find the other her. “What are you doing?” she gasped, finally spotting the woman, upside down, disinterested as she gazed at the display, tapping something into it.

“Getting the only part of you I have any use for,” she replied coldly.

***

“What the hell is she doing- what the hell are you doing?” Graham added his protests to Ryan and Yaz’s, but he addressed the not-doctor directly now, fighting down panic. The one tied down to the table was panicking, but the one stood by the controls of the thing spared a glance his direction- a glance that made the old man’s heart sink. “Getting my second heart back,” she said coolly, “So we can get out of here.”

“Aw, no…” Ryan moaned, as Yaz stilled in shock. 

“She can’t be serious,” the young woman whispered, glancing wildly at Graham for reassurance. He shook his head helplessly. 

“I- I don’t know, but we- hey listen, Doc,” he once again banged on the door with his fist, and she looked up, again. 

“Don’t worry, Graham,” she assured, then frowned thoughtfully. “You lot might not want to watch this, actually,” she said, and the humans all let out noises of horror. “Doc, listen, before you go ripping anyone’s heart out,” he started, but she interrupted him again.

“I know this has been a weird day, but trust me, this is for the best,” she said, flashing them a reassuring smile that did anything but reassure them. Yaz looked on the verge of tears. 

“Let us in!” she demanded, punching the door and wincing, and Graham grimaced and caught her arm as she drew it back again, gently moving her away from it. 

“Yaz, don’t,” he advised, feeling once again the weight of responsibility of looking out for her and Ryan when the Doctor wasn’t able to. “Look, we- we’ve gotta-” he glanced around the med bay, searching for an answer. Ryan followed his gaze, massaging his jaw worriedly.

“Think like the Doctor,” he muttered. “Come up with a plan. Save the day. We can do this.”

They turned away from the door and hurried to start trying to find something, anything. Graham winced as he heard the nauseating noises of a medical machine whirring to life in the other room.

They’d really have to hurry.


	7. The Tell Tale Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SLIGHT Timeless Child spoilers in this chapter (the fic still takes place before that ep but, you know, being tied down to a table about to undergo an unwilling and traumatic medical procedure........ may have jogged some buried memories)

The humans had run off somewhere.

Good. They didn’t need to witness this- it’d only scare them. The Doctor didn’t think she was scared anymore, but she remembered it- remembered the feel of it, white hot and treacherous in her hearts. Now she only had one, but unlike her counterpart writhing ineffectually on the table, she wasn’t panicking, so one heart was perfectly adequate.

“What are you going to get out of this?”

She turned to herself, raising her eyebrows coldly. “What do you mean?”

“What are you going to do, after you get rid of me? What’s the _ point _ of you, without me?” Her weaker, softer self was gasping, fastened down but still struggling, always struggling. Her face was twisted in pain, but the Doctor remained unbothered. She would get her heart back, and be whole, finally. Free of all the doubt and pain that plagued her, free of grief and panic and fear. Free of the hesitation that cost her friends their lives so many times.

“The point is that I’ll be what you wanted us to be. I’ll help-  _ actually  _ help.”

“But why?” The soft Doctor pressed, “Why bother helping?”

This did throw her for just a moment. Why bother helping? Because it was who she was. She was the Doctor, and she was there to help. 

  
Her forehead creased with irritation as her other half took the pause as an opportunity to continue speaking.

“I know why I help! Out of love! I  _ care _ ! But you have nothing but fury and bitterness, you don’t care, you’re just doing what you think is right out of habit!”

The Doctor paused in her preparations, and turned on her heel to stare coldly at her double. She took a deliberate step forwards and bent down, her face inches from the other her’s. She tried to worm away, but the bounds prevented her from moving any meaningful distance. “I love them too,” she breathed, voice shaking, “I love them, and you keep letting them die because you’re  _ weak _ . You can cry and act a weak, emotional fool, but you’re more than willing to stand by and make shit decisions and _ let  _ them hurt. Don’t tell me I don’t care. Inaction is not the same as being good,  _ Doctor _ .” She snarled her own name, hazel eyes meeting hazel eyes with enough force to throw sparks.

“Good luck having them still love you if you go through with this,” her other side said, shaking her head with an unbearably pious expression on her face. Rage laced through her and she seized the woman’s hair, shaking, and slammed her head into the table, hard. Her own voice painted the room with pain, and she was filled with the temptation to repeat the action, until the noise stopped for good. Fortunately, that seemed to have shut her up, and she stalked back to the controls, filled with determination.

She would prove her wrong. She’d do the things the weak, pathetic Doctor had been too afraid to do. She would keep the humans safe, even if it was hard. Even if it made them dislike her. They would see, in the end, she’d done it for them. This too, they would understand, in time. She wouldn’t fail them like her weaker half did.

***

The impact to the back of her head had sent the room spinning, and she closed her eyes, still tugging against the restraints on her wrist, still fumbling and thrashing, still trying. She wasn’t beaten, she refused to be beaten. Too much more than her own life was at stake. The knock to her head had apparently dislodged something- she’d been tied up before, but some memory was resurfacing and she gasped, feeling the incursion of something she recognised but had forgotten. She was laid on a medical bed in an earthen lab, and an old woman loomed over her. She knew that face, but the name… the name was missing. The woman’s eyes were on her work, but they turned to the Doctor and… white hot fear lanced through her, and she tried to keep still, but something told her this was not a face to trust. She needed to run, she had to flee, this woman was bad news, she felt a certainty that ran bone deep.

The vision faded, and she gasped, tears that she couldn’t wipe away tracking down her cheeks. “I saw something,” she whispered, before twisting her head to try and see her other half. She could only see a slice. “Hey, I saw something! It-- it made no sense, but I-” it was too confusing. Was she experiencing her own memories? Something she’d forgotten? Had being split in half somehow halved her memories? Oh she wished she’d realised what was happening sooner. The cold Doctor paid no attention to her, and she screwed her eyes up, trying to think in the spiralling exhaustion that was weighing down her limbs and her thoughts.

***

“When did you even pick this up?” Yaz wondered, gingerly handling the dumbbell-shaped lure that Ryan had produced. “I thought it might be useful,” he said edgily, and Graham grinned widely. “Well done, Ryan,” he said approvingly, slapping the young man on the back. Yaz nodded, but her expression defaulted to what she assumed looked like blind panic a second later. 

“So we set this off on the door and… hope the creature comes towards it? We don’t even know if this is the kind of thing that’ll attract it!”

“Well, maybe not, but it’s the best we’ve got right now, isn’t it? We aint getting in that way-” Graham jerked his thumb in the direction of the computer, which had stubbornly refused to yield them any help. Yaz sighed and nodded.

“And we’re going to have to get out of the way pretty quick once we do activate it,” Ryan added, “We don’t want it to come and tear us to shreds.”

“It wont tear anyone to shreds hopefully,” Yaz muttered, knuckling her forehead, “We need both of the Doctors to figure out how to get them back together again.”

“It sounds really weird when you say it like that,” Ryan muttered. She rolled her eyes.

  
“There’s no non-weird way to talk about it,” she said exasperatedly, as they all looked anxiously back towards the operating room doors. A short while ago there had been yet another shout and it had taken everything they had not to run up to the doors and look. They needed the cold Doctor to think they’d run off and given up, so she’d be completely distracted.

“This feels really dicey,” Graham muttered unhappily, “There’s so many things that might go wrong. I mean, what if it just… bites both of them in half, what do we do then.”

“It’s not going to maul anyone,” Yaz said confidently, wishing she felt as sure as she sounded, “We’d better get on.”

Graham and Ryan scuttled off to their hiding spots and she took a deep breath and approached the door. “Don’t worry, Doctor,” she muttered under her breath as she drew back her fist and aimed the lure, “We’re going to get you back.”

She smashed the glass against the door and flung herself away, as an ear-splitting whistle filled the ship.

***   
  
“What?”

“The lure!”

She blinked wildly at her other side, as a ferocious bellow sounded, some distance away but approaching rapidly, “They activated the fishing lure! That thing’s coming- I don’t think the door’s going to stand up to it!”

“They- but-” the cold Doctor let out a shout of frustration, pulling the sonic out and aiming it at the medical machine, which screamed to life. Over the noise, approaching thuds reverberated through the ship, and the Doctor struggled to turn her head so she had an upside-down view of the door. A second later the dark shape smashed through the door, shrieking it’s displeasure. The Doctor’s double was knocked flying, but the machine instantly swung into operation, a robotic arm delivering a needle into it’s side.

The creature snarled for a moment longer, bringing it’s arm up on the machine, and the Doctor shouted in alarm as it’s sharp claws tore through the bulky robotic-surgeon that sat just above her head. The table juddered at the sudden imbalance and she was pitched, still restrained, backwards as half of the pod was destroyed on top of her. The creature gave one more feeble shriek and collapsed with a groan.

Upside down, coughing as she breathed in dust, and half-crushed by a fallen piece of equipment, the Doctor considered following it’s example. But the arrival of three pairs of footsteps kept her clinging onto consciousness in spite of her body’s very keen insistence to let her become unconscious.

“Doctor!” three voices shouted as one.

“Down here,” she croaked, and she tried the bindings again. Without the power, her arms wiggled free, although her side felt like it had been half-crushed with the debris of the operator. Ryan, Yaz and Graham appeared and let out various noises of alarm, and Ryan and Yaz immediately started rolling the ruined chunk of machinery off her. She groaned as the pressure lifted and lay still for a moment on her side, eyes screwed up.

“Doctor?” Yaz said in a small voice. She opened one eye and gave them a smile that probably looked more like a grimace. “Really good plan, well done,” she breathed, blinking as she struggled to sit up. Every single part of her body hurt in some way. The right side of her torso was aching dully, as was her right arm, and she could feel broken bones. Her chest still ached with the strain of one heart, and her head pounded. Her left hand was still broken from punching the door, and her back was complaining from being tossed around by-

“Where is she?” she muttered, content to have levered herself into a vaguely upright posture, back lent against the remains of the operating table and legs still stretched all the way out.

Yaz stood up and shuffled around the prone form of the creature, regarding it warily, but it looked out cold. She knelt down behind the mass of black fur and gave a relieved yell. “She’s here, she’s okay, she’s just been knocked out,” she said, and the Doctor was treated to the bizarre view of Yaz lifting an unconscious double of her and carrying her gently into view.

“So, I hope I’m not the only one who needs a bit of an explanation as to what the bloody hell just happened,” Graham said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I FINALLY ADDED A NEW CHAPTER OF THIS. I actually realised that most of the conflict that I would've wanted to happen between left and right heart doctor kinda happened last chapter, so we're moving on! More to come still but of a slightly different ilk. also I did have to throw in a little timeless child tease in here, it was too good to resist


	8. Pandora's Box

Ryan blinked between the two Doctors worriedly. Both of them looked in bad shape. The terrifying half had apparently been knocked unconscious when the alien smashed through the door, a tiny trickle of blood oozing from the corner of her mouth. It was their friend’s face but even unconscious it seemed sinister- pale, sharp cheeks and haughty eyebrows, cut from marble. Then there was the warmer, kinder seeming Doctor, although she didn’t seem exactly whole either- the Doctor never moved so gingerly, seemed so small. Nothing could have slowed her down, kept her so still, and that was almost as upsetting as the callous lack of feeling the other had been displaying.

“Doctor, what happened,” Yaz asked, kneeling beside the conscious Doctor, who was slowly righting herself, a grimace poorly disguised as a smile. The alien sagged slightly, into Yaz, with a breathless noise of pain, and the young woman steadied her with a hand to her shoulder.

“Split in half,” the words were sharp, cut off awkwardly between the Doctor’s teeth as she restlessly adjusted her position again, “Sorry- ’m surprised I’m not regenerating-” her eyes flashed anxiously to her pair, passed out on the floor, “Be fine though, ‘m sure…” her eyelids flickered as she pitched sideways. Yaz wrapped her arms around the time travellers shoulders more firmly, and to Ryan’s surprise she didn’t protest at all, her head laid on Yaz’s chest. She opened her eyes again and gave Ryan and Graham a weak smile.

“Thank you, all. I-I’m sorry you had to-” she sucked a breath in, everything shallow in her throat, “See that.” Her eyes darted to the unconscious copy. Her expression was inscrutable for a moment until, with a shiver, Ryan recognised it. Dread. The Doctor faced down fear on a daily basis, but the way she was looking at her other half wasn’t anything he’d seen before. The only other time she’d seemed this wrong-footed was when she had discovered O’s true identity, but she wasn’t shocked- she seemed to know exactly what the double was.

***

“Doc?”

Graham’s voice was hesitant, and she scrabbled for purchase against consciousness, hauling the room back into focus as she moved her head to look at him. He looked worried, and she knew she’d have to pull herself together in short order. But her limbs were absolutely bereft of strength, her torso aching, her head clouded. Dimly, she realised she was going to need to get some oxygen soon.  
  


“If… if she isn’t an evil clone… if she was just a half of you…” he had that wounded look on his face, his voice a dry whisper. Afraid. So worried for her, so scared to provoke her. She understood why- but any willingness to push them all away was absent, quite literally gone from her. The darker half had been right- she really _was_ weakening in her old age. She sighed, with her whole body, limbs and chest sinking momentarily into Yaz, comforted briefly, before focusing hard and beginning the laborious process of levering herself upright.

They protested, but she ignored them, as she ignored the physical complaints. Her body just had to comply, as she levered herself into a sitting position on one of the wrecked parts of the operating table, her shoulders rising like twin mountains between which her head sank, arms braced on her legs and meeting one another anxiously near her forehead.

“I have tried…” she began, voice low, and tired, “To keep her from you. I didn’t want you to see this half of me.” Slowly, she raised her head, looking past three worried humans to her other half, her secret, her sins. “She’s as much the Doctor as I am, even though I hate to admit it. I have a very, very long history…” she felt tears starting in the corners of her eyes. She hated that this would be easier if she was whole. The other side wouldn’t have been held back, she would have roared so long and loud that Ryan Yaz and Graham would’ve never wanted to ask anything again, and it wouldn’t have hurt.

“That’s not part of you,” Yaz’s voice was betrayed, “No, you- you’re _the Doctor_.”

She hitched a tiny, watery laugh at that, shaking her head with an empty smile. Of course they were refusing to believe it. She’d done her job well- she, the light, the wonder, the smiles and over-the-top-antics, the chatter and the charm. She’d distracted them from the murky depths and shielded them from the sinister darkness, and both halves had got what they needed- company, approval, love kept at arms length. But oh how the darkness was getting restless, and stirred up with the Master’s crimes, howling for his blood in Gallifrey’s empty sands.

“The Doctor,” she spat her own name, bitterness like unpleasant medicine on her tongue, “The person who makes things better. Just because I get to choose my title doesn’t mean other people will use it.” She shook her head. “The Oncoming Storm. Destroyer of Worlds. The Dark One. A thief, a renegade, a traitor- oh, and it’s all true.” Her gaze bored into the floor as she spoke, voice shaking, “I _try_ to help. But I’m so old, I’ve lived through so much. Too much to still be good.”

She looked up at Ryan, Yaz and Graham, who looked shades of sickened. She didn’t blame them. “All my strength,” the words were ragged, broken, “It takes all my strength to not give in. She wants me dead for the same reason I don’t want her back in here,” she tapped a temple with a trembling finger.

“What reason?” whispered Ryan, captivated, horrified.

“I make her feel the pain of what I’ve done. She makes the choices that are impossible to make. Everything I do, it leads to suffering. Before I was two people, I wanted to kill the pain.” Her voice was even now, as she reflected, as if from a distance. “I’m not surprised she wants to go on without me. All those choices… all those lives I took, in the name of saving people, in the name of protecting the scared, the weak, the weary… how much easier it could’ve all been, if I hadn’t been so guilty, and afraid.”

***

It was certainly not the Doctor- they’d had to drag the small parts of her history from her tooth and nail, but here was someone, wearing the Doctor’s face, holding the Doctor’s memories, painting a vividly disturbing picture of someone that Graham recognised even less than the cringing wreck and the unfeeling murderer.

“Hold on,” he said, glancing to the still unconscious form of the darker Doctor, “Isn’t she the one who would wanna tell us all this… stuff, about you? Why are _you_ telling us, if you’re supposedly the… kinder half?”

“This isn’t me being kind or unkind, Graham,” she sighed, looking disappointed, “I think I’d call it being weak. She… I wanted to think you would all be safer if you didn’t know. Perhaps I just wanted you to stay as long as possible.” She let out a disgusted little snort. “Keeping you all safe is the one thing all of me agrees on, and making my history your problem isn’t safe for you, it’s not fair or right or kind... “

Graham wasn’t able to deny that. The hollow, solemn list of monikers was each more chilling than the last. Glimpses of darkness had been pouring out recently, and suddenly the dam had broken on them all. Knowing that a sinister, murderous force had been a part of their jovial, friendly time traveller all along was unsettling in the extreme, and he wasn’t sure he’d look at her the same way again. And all the more troubling, it seemed that in the absence of worlds to destroy and planets to protect, she was turning that bloodlust inwards.

It was even more alarming when she stood, dusting her coat down and gazing at her other half with deadened eyes.

“The Universe needs her,” she stated, voice wooden, automatic, “So that no-one else has to feel how I feel. I’ll make the choices that would be impossible, and I’ll be the one to feel the pain for it. I can’t do that without her, and she cannot be without me.”

“But… what about _you_ ?” Yaz’s blazing eyes were filled with tears, “You go back to fighting your own mind? Doctor, that’s not _fair_.”

“Yeah, you shouldn’t have to suffer because of a load of choices you didn’t wanna make,” Ryan added.

“Doc, you don’t want to do this. Isn’t there another way?” Graham knew deep down there wasn’t. There was no running from yourself, not even in the wide, wide universe.

The Doctor gave them a smile that was as sudden as it was brilliant. “Oh my fam. If it comes to keeping the universe safe, and safe from me, I could stand anything.” Graham wondered if it was bravado- he was haunted by the look of resignation she’d been wearing moments earlier. Before any of them could protest any further, she walked past them, over to her double, expression determined and jaw set, her usual breezy tones heavy and melancholy.

“Now I know what’s happened with the teleport, I can activate it from here, no need to use the chamber. I’ll come and collect you in the TARDIS when I-” she paused, and they couldn’t see her face- she was retrieving her sonic from the other Doctor’s coat, knelt down and head bent, “When I’m ready.”

Without another word, the pair shimmered and were gone.

Another moment later and a familiar gasping, labouring noise filled the destroyed chamber. “That was quick,” Graham muttered, then remembered the TARDIS’ temporal qualities. They all stood back, and he realised both Yaz and Ryan were huddling close by, and he took a half a step forwards protectively as the ship solidified.

With an endlessly familiar click and creak, the door swung open.

> _Only Hope was left within her unbreakable house,_ _she remained under the lip of the jar, and did not_ _fly away. Before she could, Pandora replaced the li_ _d of the jar._
> 
> _\- Hesiod, Works and Days_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHEW. I didn't realise I was gonna finish this today but there we go. I hope you guys enjoyed it!
> 
> I'm working on a new fic, something I'm really excited about, but I'm gonna be writing it a liiiiittle bit differently to usual. I wont bore you with the details but the upshot is that my currently updating fics will likely be updating slightly less frequently now (not that I have a regular update schedule anyway bUT) so that I can focus on writing this new fic, which I wont be uploading until it's fully written and completed. Hoping it's gonna be worth it, but fear not, I'm still working on all the others as well- Clipped has the next chapter partly done, so that'll probably update next.


	9. Epilogue

She’s quiet as she lets them in, and doesn’t.

It’s ironic, Yaz reflects, that a lack of openness is what characterises the Doctor. Is how they know it’s her.

The Doctor’s entire body speaks of pain, and not just from the day’s adventures, although those certainly look like they hurt. But worse is the way her face is like a cornered animal, all watchful, glittering gazes and nervous movements.

Before any of them can ask if she’s alright she’s out of the TARDIS, back into the ruined medical bay, freezing for just a moment in the cold artificial lights, before crossing to the unconscious creature and kneeling by it’s head. Her eyes drift shut as she presses two fingers gently to it’s fur and she gasps. The fingers slide along the creature’s face, running a hand tenderly along it’s long, bony snout.

"I called her away," she murmured, "She came running at the sound of another one of her kind. I get it now."

“Doc, what…” Graham begins, but the sound seems to unstick her, and she’s suddenly her usual flurry of manic movement, a bird trapped in a building. “Come on, guys, help me lift her,” she says, cradling the creature’s head. They maneuver her (with some difficulty) into the TARDIS and the Doctor sets about finding a suitable home for her to live out her days.

* * *

“We watched her until she came around, she was perfectly alright,” The Doctor assures Captain Montgomery, after they rescue her from deep space, “I took her back to where she came from.”

Captain Montgomery looks devastated. “She’s the last one, she’ll be alone,” the woman protests, shaking her head, “That was what we wanted to avoid-”

“That wont be a problem,” Ryan grins, as the Doctor goes quiet and still.

“See what you don’t know,” Graham chips in, “Is that the Doc can travel through time.”

Yaz catches the captain’s eye and smiles warmly. “We took her back to a time when there were lots of her species. She wont be alone at all.”

The captain is very grateful, the Doctor is very quiet. They wave goodbye and step back in TARDIS and leave, and after the day they’ve had even the Doctor is content to let them float a while. Ryan and Graham watch her anxiously as she parks the ancient ship in a distant orbit around 21st Century Earth, and Yaz worries as she crosses to the doors to dangle her legs out into endless space, watching the planet below. She’s lit with the reflected light from the Earth, and the distant scattering of stars, but they see only her silhouette, darkened against the grandeur of the universe. She’s such a lonely figure, thinks Yaz, head lent against the battered old wooden doorframe.

“Doctor?” she asks, and shoulders tense under icy blue fabric. But she turns to look, face highlighted in starlight and shadowed with the infinite darkness of the void. Yaz swallows nervously, but Graham and Ryan are both there, nearby in her peripheral vision. The TARDIS, too, seems to hum encouragement.

The Doctor gazes up at them, utterly still- not even a rise and fall of breath to show she’s even alive. Maybe she isn’t, not in the same way they are. Definitely not human. She looks like a goddess, or a demon- perched on the edge of an endless fall, lit from all around by the ambient lighting of the distant cosmos and the homely blue glow of the humans’ planet. One elbow leans on her knee, the other leg entirely out of the door- what an unusual sensation, Yaz supposes it must be.

That’s where the Doctor lives though, she realises, looking down at their time traveller, their lonely alien, their friend. Between the familiar and the unknown, between light and dark. One foot always out the door, no matter what’s on the other side. She probably isn’t even afraid to fall- in some ways, she’s already falling, endlessly through time and space.

“Glad you’re back,” Yaz concedes, shelving her questions. All that darkness, all the mystery and history, only seems to make her more fascinating, and wonderful, and Yaz’ heart breaks just a little more. The Doctor stares at her for a moment longer, wide hazel eyes surprised, just for a second. Her lips twitch in a tired little smile, pained but real, not a false grin stretched across her features to try and calm their fears, but a true moment of happiness, in spite of everything.

“Thanks, Yaz,” she whispers, voice like old leaves, and then the softer moment in her face is gone, and she turns away again, expression falling into something cool as she gazes towards the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SNEAK FINAL CHAPTER, it's not really an entire chapter, just tying up some lose ends.
> 
> hopefully the story makes sense, I favoured character moments over explaining every little bit of the plot, but if you were curious: the ship's captain discovered the creature, the last of it's kind, and wanted to preserve it and take it somewhere safe. the creature isn't sapient, but it was able to be called away from mauling left-heart-doctor because right-heart-doctor mimiced it's call (with the help of the computer, the doctor can't just make eldritch screaming noises inthisfic) and got it to go looking to see what the noise was. obviously it's dangerous and the crew bit off a little more than they could chew trying to smuggle it to safety.
> 
> ANYWAY WOULD YOU GUYS LOOK AT THAT THIS FIC IS FINISHED that means I get to start SEVEN NEW ONES  
> I seriously have way too many ideas I'm so sorry y'all. let me know which of my less updated fics you wanna see get some love? cyberpunk AU, doctardis fusion AU, hadestown AU? those three are all kind of in limbo as I work on Clipped and the on the run and thirteen and ten fics, but if anyone's into any of those I'd be happy to start updating them again!

**Author's Note:**

> My infinite thanks to Justphoenix and picnokenisis for their help with some aspects of this story, I am sooooo excited to get this out.


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